Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Car-meggdon

I don't know if it is playing in the rest off the country, but Los Angeles is just two days away from what the media is calling Car-meggdon. It is an event born totally of the Southern California love affair between the car and their evil partner the freeway. The traffic in Los Angeles is legendary and local journeys are expressed as a formula of distance multiplied by time of day. From my house to LAX Airport at 4:00AM it takes 20 minutes, at 4:00PM it averages an hour. Either way you have to take the 405, not just 405, THE 405. Freeways in Los Angeles are so important their number must be proceeded by an article of speech. It is also acceptable to refer to them by their proper name like THE Santa Monica freeway, the San Diego Freeway or the Harbor Freeway. You get the idea that the freeways here are necessary monsters that demand the respect of the locals.The 405 or, the name we use to confuse the tourist, the San Diego Freeway, is one of the most used, most crowded and most necessary arteries from the valley to the westside and the link to the airport. It is so important and such a problem at times that the city has decided to widen it and add carpool lanes due to be finished by 2013. For the most part the construction has been done at night when several lanes can be closed with the least interruption of service. But there is a bridge over the freeway at Mulholland Drive that must be completely demolished because its span is not wide enough. The time has come to complete that step of the project. It will require complete closure of the 405 for ten miles, both ways cutting the expanse of the LA sprawl in half for 52 hours this weekend. The resulting traffic problems has been dubbed Car-meggdon. Unfortunately I can not just stay at home and lounge in the pool like the media is telling us to do during the closure. I must travel by air. I was scheduled to leave out of LAX and return during Car-meggdon. The only solution was to change my routing and fly through the Burbank Airport which is on my side of town. It will require me to take two planes to get to my gig and three planes to get back. Ah the glamor of show biz.As you were,Jay